The worst day...

Warning: this is a pretty graphic, emotionally charged brain dump that Rich convinced me should be posted to the blog because he feels our family and friends will want to know… I wrote it initially as an email to a few folks and I admit that I don’t have the heart to do much editing, so here is the story…

We have had what perhaps (I hope) will be the worst day of our journey… On Tuesday morning, May 20, we were getting ourselves organized for a day of errands here in St. John’s. We’d arrived in the city the night before and had some random life maintenance kinds of stuff to tend to like getting a local cell phone, finding the Toyota dealer to get a flat tire mended, refilling our propane tank, etc. In the afternoon, I was to meet with a faculty member at Memorial University, a meeting I was looking forward to as it felt like the official launch of my project. None of that happened.

Instead, as I was rummaging through my gear crate looking for something as mundane as clean socks, Anouk, who was roaming around our campsite like a drunken sailor on her wobbly but increasingly confident little legs, ambled up to the boat trailer, a perfect height for baby to regain balance. She reached the tongue of the boat trailer where her maman, that would be me, had stupidly stupidly stupidly set her tea mug down for just a moment (did I mention stupidly?). You can guess what happened. She reached for it and it came tumbling down on her. A scream like I have never heard before hit a chord inside of me and I knew my baby girl was experiencing pain on a scale unimaginable. It was horrible! Horrible!

I flew into action, somehow knowing in my gut what to do (perhaps all that Wilderness First Responder Training paying off)… Called for Rich to get water, ripped her clothes off and poured and poured and poured. Her skin was blistering, sloughing off, red… She screamed, and pushed away, trying desperately to get away from the pain. I knew instantly we needed to take her to the ER. Rich dropped the pop-up camper in a flash. Adrenaline flowing, action mode… Hold back the maman-freak out, keep it in control, deal with the issue, help Anouk NOW! Shit where are the car keys, find the spare. Where the hell is the hospital? I know, it is down the street, I saw it on the map. (For some reason, I had gotten in the habit from day one of the trip of identifying where medical help was located…perhaps such planning backfired, foreshadowed our urgent need). Highway, shit we missed the hospital, ask the car next to us, open window, screaming baby practically leaps out of my arms she is so frantic to get away from the pain, “Oh love, you missed it, Health Sciences is back there.” U-Turn, Rich driving like mad, move MOVE, get out of my way, yet driving safe, composed, fighting panic. Turn, there it is I think, why the hell don’t they have the big H sign on the road… Leap out of the car before it is stopped, running with naked Anouk into the Child ER, no one at the desk, a room full of parents and kids watching me and my screaming baby. Admitting nurse walks by. MY BABY IS BURNED! “Sorry love, I’ll get this nurse to look at her in a minute.” SHE CAN’T WAIT A MINUTE. Am I screaming too? ER nurse hears the commotion, “Come in quick this way, me love.”

Within minutes, four nurses are applying cold compressed to the burns. Or trying. Anouk squirms and flails, screams and screeches, her eyes wild, her normally pink cheeks crimson with fear and anguish. Minutes later, a shot of morphine in the leg. A few more minutes, she calms to whimpers. Eyes fluttering, glassing over. The ER doc says something, don’t know exactly what. Anouk is in my arms and I rock her. I am about to puke. Rich takes her. He has beads of sweat all over his forehead I notice. I sit on the bed, the tears start coming.

Anouk has second degree (with the possibility of some parts being third degree) burns on her right arm to below the inside of the elbow, her front shoulder and down the chest until just above her nipple. There is also a spot on her neck where there was obviously a splash. The doctor says third degree burns can take up to several days to manifest themselves so it is too soon to determine. Anouk has been in a dressing of polysporin and a paraphin-soaked gauze (Jelonet) covered by dry gauze and a stretchy material worn like a t-shirt to hold it all together. Yesterday she went through a whirlpool treatment with bubbling water to help clean out the wound and slough off any dead skin. Today, she will go through the same thing. They gave her morphine again for the tub treatment, otherwise she has been on Tylenol. The pain relief is calming. When it kicks in, our little Anouk comes back to us, giggles, laughs, captures everyone’s heart. “God love her, she’s some sweet.” We feel well cared for here. I am working hard to let my rational side convince my emotional side that I am not to blame.

……

A few days later…

As the truth of her burns slowly manifest themselves, so does her character: sweet, strong, loving, brave, and a belly-laugh-inducing teasing streak. It is amazing to me that all the joy that is a 13 month old baby, all this development that happens seemingly daily, sometimes hourly, all this continues. For me, it feels like time stopped at about 9:20 AM on Tuesday, May 20, 2008, and it is only coming back to itself in slow motion. For Anouk, life has marched on, every day something new to laugh about. She is discovering how to give hugs, true wrap-your-arms-around-someone-and-squeeze hugs. She darts around the hospital corridors with an emerging confidence that belies the trauma she has experienced. On her hallway walkabouts, she checks in with me regularly, but today she went around a bend without looking back. When she falls, nine times out of ten, she just picks herself back up, having learned seamlessly to stand with the help of only one hand. Though the other hand is limited because of all the bandages on her shoulder and arm, she works hard to pass an amaranth cookie from one hand to the other. If she were an adult, I’d swear she just wants to keep fluid motion in her arm, not let the wound site atrophy. But Anouk is just going about her daily business, being the busy baby she is. “God love her,” as the nurses have said a hundred times, “she’s some pleasant, isn’t she?”